Adaptec today announced that it is expanding its external RAID family of products to include the DuraStor 7220SS, a SAN-ready 2 GB Fibre Channel storage subsystem. This new solution complements Adaptec's DuraStor 6220SS, the SCSI storage subsystem launched last year.

Market research firm Gartner Dataquest projects that storage consolidation based on the SAN architecture will rapidly evolve during the next four years. "Storage based in the SAN architecture provides numerous benefits to organizations, like reduced administrative costs through centralized management of storage, improved storage availability, enhanced storage asset utilization, and potential decrease in absolute disk storage cost," said Roger Cox, chief analyst at Gartner Dataquest. "By offering a Fibre Channel solution, Adaptec is enabling customers to choose between a direct attached storage (DAS) or a storage area network (SAN) environment," Cox added.

"Adaptec is enabling resellers to make money in the fast-growing SAN market by offering a reliable and affordable storage solution that works across multiple server platforms," said Lee Caswell, vice president and general manager of Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. "Resellers can take advantage of the Adaptec testing process with a product that works across Windows-based, Linux and UNIX environments, and is backed up by world-class service and support."

"When we assembled our own RAID boxes we always had to worry about support," explained Jon Breen, sales manager at SAG Solutions. "Four or five different manufacturers were involved in the process, and there was always finger-pointing every time an issue arose. Since we switched to Adaptec's DuraStor product line, this has no longer been an issue. We get everything we need from the same source, and we're very pleased with the service and support that they offer."

DuraStor 7220SS is the ideal choice for heterogeneous IT environments. The subsystem also has the ability to support LAN-free backups, an excellent alternative for environments with a heavily congested LAN that need to perform system backups without impacting network performance. LAN-free backup is a first step into SAN technology, but with the addition of external storage, applications such as storage centralization, virtualization, and clustering allow IT environments to reach new levels of reliability, flexibility and scalability.

About DuraStor 7220SS

Adaptec's DuraStor 7220SS Storage Subsystem is a 3U Fibre Channel-to-SCSI storage subsystem with 12 Ultra 160 SCSI drive enclosures, a Fibre Channel RAID controller, and an easy-to-use Storage Manager Pro software for Microsoft® Windows NT®, Windows® 2000, and Sun Solaris® operating environments. By adding a second (optional) Fibre Channel RAID controller, the DuraStor 7220SS can be configured for high availability. RAID level support includes 0, 1, 0/1, 3, 4, 5, 0/5, and just a bunch of disks (JBOD). Highly fault-tolerant and easily scalable to four drive enclosures, the DuraStor 7220SS can store up to 3.5 TBytes of data using 73 GB drives.

Customers can select their preferred disk drives from a list of Adaptec-approved vendors. The full solution comes with a free one-year onsite service and support plan, as well as other upgradeable service options.

Pricing and Availability

The DuraStor 7220SS SCSI external RAID subsystem will ship to selected distributors and resellers in the United States within 30 days at an MSRP beginning at $9,799. Priced separately, the MSRP for the Fibre Channel RAID controller is $4,700.